Resources for Entrepreneurs

Norfolk has made the lists of Entrepreneur Magazine as a Top 5 City for Entrepreneurs. USA Today named Norfolk a Millennial Magnet based upon the population of 20-29 year olds being greater than the teen population. There are a host of other accolades including the designation of downtown zip code 23510 as the third best Hipster neighborhood in the nation by RealtyTrac.

ODU Innovation Center - Norfolk ODU's Center for Enterprise Innovation has partnered with the City of Norfolk to open the new ODU Innovation Center - Norfolk at 501B Boush Street. The new center is both a collaboration space and a program designed to build and grow a community of scalable entrepreneurial businesses. The center delivers professionally managed incubation and acceleration assistance along with co-working space for freelancers, creatives, telecommuters, and anyone seeking to join and contribute to the downtown startup community. For more information visit their website or contact them at (757) 683-7600, or .

The Strome Entrepreneur Center opened with much fanfare at ODU in the fall of 2014. The Strome Entrepreneurial Center hosts an aggressive regimen of events and workshops as it creates an entrepreneurial culture, including social entrepreneurship.

The ODU Business Gateway is a unique resource which includes several tentacles reaching out to various resources for businesses, industry and entrepreneurs. Fields include the Technology Applications Center, Launch Hampton Roads, The Veteran’s Business Outreach Center, Women’s Business center and the Hampton Roads Procurement Assistance Center.

757 Accelerate is a non-profit startup accelerator program. Their mission is to provide startups with the customized resources and capital they need to grow. 757 Accelerate boosts promising startups towards customer traction and revenue using a network of mentors, investors, support services, working space and a lean startup educations.

757 Angels seeks to provide risk adjusted returns for its members and investors and to catalyze the evonomy. 757 Angels is a select network of over 100 business and community leaders in the Hampton Roads region, who provide investment capital, stratefic advice and mentoring to selected startup and early stage companies to help them achieve market leadership. 757 Angels seeks dealflow from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

StarWheel the mission is to centralize and mobilize efforts that foster the growth of entrepreneurism in our regional innovation economy. StartWheel aims to guide and cultivate an entrepreneurial network where talent, resources information and leadership come together.

Hatch, Norfolk's accelerator, is a mentor-based startup accelerator program for technology and design entrepreneurs who are ready to build a product and launch a company.